Living with Laïcité

Bishop Pierre Whalon

This article is also available in FrenchCet article est également disponible en français

The Bishop in charge of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe since 2001, Pierre Whalon, is a citizen of France and the United States. Here, he considers the question of laïcité.

In his acceptance speech for an honorary doctorate conferred by the Institut catholique de Paris, Archbishop Justin Welby said this: “Here, in France, I would say – perhaps somewhat provocatively – that laïcité has served its purpose.” He was translating his text into French on sight, and he added an aside: “It needs to be put in a museum.”

Somewhat provocatively, indeed. The question of laïcité is perhaps the burning subject in France. The word does not translate, but it signifies a right of conscience. For recent governments of the Fifth Republic, however, this right has been re-interpreted to mean that religion is a private matter, and that in the public square (so to speak, this is not a French expression), nothing religious should intrude.

In a recent book, Laïcité : l’expression publique de la religion (Paris : ATF France, 2018), Jean-Michel Cadiot and I argue that this is a false idea of religion, that it is actually a de facto establishment of atheism as France’s religion. In that every human being must have an answer to what the German-American theologian Paul Tillich called “ultimate questions” – what is death, who am I, what is true, etc – everyone is religious in nature. The word “religion” means to bind up, to tie together, and our personal, intimate answers to these are inherently religious.

In this sense, then, we are all religious. To put it in anthropological terms, it is a marker of Homo sapiens that we each have some sense of the sacred, even if one concludes that this feeling, and the ultimate questions it raises, are meaningless. It goes with the other aspects of humanity that distinguish us from all other animals, namely, highly symbolic language, artistic creation, and symbolic pair-bonding, ie, marriage.

Therefore no one can say, “I am not religious,” even though some 40 per cent of my compatriots describe themselves this way. Rather, the fact that we are all religious, needing to answer ultimate questions of our lives, answers which evolve over time as well, absolutely requires a right to conscience, a fundamental freedom of religion.

Americans know from their history that religious freedom is the basic human right. The French know it too, though historically it has meant freedom from the Roman Catholic Church’s power over French society. This brings us to the dilemma of this time of Islamist terrorism, which is how to redefine laïcité so that it allows for genuine freedom of conscience while preserving the common good.

Our book’s answer is education. If I have a right to conscience, so do my neighbors. If they must respect my right, I must respect theirs. Doing so requires basic education. But as Anglicans around the world know in their respective contexts, this is easier said than done. It is however a vital struggle that all of us, including the French, must engage.

Vivre la laïcité Bishop Pierre Whalon

This article is also available in EnglishCet article est également disponible en anglais